The Shape of Death

What does love look like?

We knowthe shape of death.

Death is a cloudimmense and awesome.

At first a lidis lifted from the eye of light:
there is a clap of sound, a white blossombelches from the jaw of fright,a pillared cloud churns from white to graylike a monstrous brain that bursts and burns,
then turns sickly black, spilling away,
filling the whole sky with ashes of dread;
thickly it wraps, between the clean seaand the moon, the earth's green head.

Trapped in its cocoon, its choking breathwe know the shape of death:

Death is a cloud.

What does love look like?

Is it a particle, a star -invisible entirely, beyond the microscope and Palomar?

A dimension unimagined, past the length of hope?

Is it a climate far and fair that we shall never darediscover?

What is its color, and its alchemy?

Is it a jewel in the earth-can it be dug?

Or dredged from the sea?

Can it be bought?

Can it be sown and harvested?

Is it a shy beast to be caught?

Death is a cloud,
immense, a clap of sound.

Love is little and not loud.

It nests within each cell, and itcannot be split.

It is a ray, a seed, a note, a word,a secret motion of our air and blood.

It is not alien, it is near-our very skin-a sheath to keep us pure of fear.